Mueller Udo, Huebner Susanna
Universität Hannover, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Abteilung Ordnungs- und Prozesspolitik, Königsworther Platz 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany.
Adv Biochem Eng Biotechnol. 2003;79:137-70. doi: 10.1007/3-540-45989-8_5.
Amino acids represent basic elements of proteins, which as a main source of nutrition themselves serve as a major reserve for maintaining essential functions of humans as well as animals. Taking the recent state of scientific knowledge into account, the industrial sector of amino acids is a priori "suitable" to a specific kind of an ecologically sound way of production, which is based on biotechnology. The following article may point out characteristics of this particular industrial sector and illustrates the applicability of the latest economic methods, founded on development of the discipline of bionics in order to describe economic aspects of amino acids markets. The several biochemical and technological fields of application of amino acids lead to specific market structures in high developed and permanently evolving systems. The Harvard tradition of industrial economics explains how market structures mould the behaviour of the participants and influences market results beyond that. A global increase in intensity of competition confirms the notion that the supply-side is characterised by asymmetric information in contrast to Kantzenbachs concept of "narrow oligopoly" with symmetrical shared knowledge about market information. Departing from this point, certain strategies of companies in this market form shall be derived. The importance of Research and Development increases rapidly and leads to innovative manufacturing methods which replace more polluting manufacturing processes like acid hydrolysis. In addition to these modifications within the production processes the article deals furthermore with the pricing based on product life cycle concept and introduces specific applications of tools like activity based costing and target costing to the field of amino acid production. The authors come to the conclusion that based on a good transferability of latest findings in bionics and ecological compatibility competitors in amino acids manufacturing are well advised to exercise concepts of the management of complex systems in order to choose the right strategy towards gaining market leadership.
氨基酸是蛋白质的基本组成部分，蛋白质本身作为主要营养来源，是维持人类和动物基本功能的主要储备。考虑到科学知识的最新状况，氨基酸工业部门原则上“适合”一种基于生物技术的特定生态友好型生产方式。以下文章可能会指出这个特定工业部门的特点，并说明基于仿生学学科发展的最新经济方法在描述氨基酸市场经济方面的适用性。氨基酸在多个生化和技术领域的应用导致了高度发达且不断演变的系统中的特定市场结构。哈佛传统的产业经济学解释了市场结构如何塑造参与者的行为，并进而影响市场结果。全球竞争强度的增加证实了这样一种观点，即与坎岑巴赫的“狭义寡头垄断”概念（市场信息对称共享）相比，供应方的特点是信息不对称。从这一点出发，将推导该市场形式下公司的某些策略。研发的重要性迅速增加，并导致创新的制造方法，取代了污染性更强的制造工艺，如酸水解法。除了生产过程中的这些改进，本文还讨论了基于产品生命周期概念的定价，并将作业成本法和目标成本法等工具的具体应用引入氨基酸生产领域。作者得出的结论是，基于仿生学最新研究成果的良好可转移性和生态兼容性，氨基酸制造领域的竞争对手最好运用复杂系统管理的概念，以便选择正确的战略来获取市场领先地位。
